


Sixteen Tons

by Cyberweasel89, SpokenSoftly



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, Gen, It's set in Iwa what do you want from me, OCs - Freeform, Self-Insert, Seriously all of the OCs, There might be like three canon characters in the first quarter of this bitch, needs more tags, suggest tags in the comments?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:04:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6737491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyberweasel89/pseuds/Cyberweasel89, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpokenSoftly/pseuds/SpokenSoftly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You ever wake up after having a heart attack and realize you've been reborn into an alternate universe where you've got a shitty dojutsu and you're in a village that got no fucking information on it published in the manga? It really sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixteen Tons

The universe loves to come up with hugely complicated ways to do relatively simple things. Like Goldberg Constructs. Or Pythagoras Switches. Or gas chambers. The need for information, in the form of memories, to be preserved despite the existence of the vessel from which those memories originate ceasing to function, could be made to happen perfectly well just by having those memories form some sort of lucid dreaming construct, but _no…_ Reincarnation is apparently the order of the day. And since most people don’t _actually_ remember being Queen Elizabeth or Mary Queen of Scots (funny how those that claim to remember such things always remember being famous people, never a dung-carter or some poor bastard that died of dysentery in Nebraska… anyway,) that follows that my remembering being an overweight, content-with-averageness dude in America who’d died from a nightmare-induced heart attack was a distinct aberration.

* * *

_Five Weeks Before the Nine-Tails Attack (September 1, Year 48)_

I enter the world screaming. This quickly stops as I take stock of what I’m seeing. Or, rather, what I’m _not_ seeing, which is anything resembling even extremely-blobby reality. I know that newborns can’t see clearly until a few days after they’re born, but you’d think that even the vaguest of shapes would be colored something other than- _ow._

Some utter bastard _smacked my ass._ And it feels like I’m upside-down! And fucking freezing! Time to complain about this state of affairs.

Ahh, nice and warm. And rightside-up, or reclining at least. So I was apparently reborn after having died, then? Score one for Buddhists. Mnh… sleepy. Nap time.

* * *

The next few weeks pass in extreme irritation. My mother is dead, apparently, as I’m dropped off at an orphanage and left to the tender mercies of the children and overworked caretakers. My ears develop sufficiently for me to recognize Japanese, about one word in five of which I properly understand (thank you, impulse control issues, that class came in handy after all) and the rest of which I’ve got the bare beginnings of a figuring-out started on.

My eyes, though. My eyes either suck or are the most amazing things ever. I’m inclined towards the former. To start, everything is blue. If it isn’t blue, it’s green, spectral outlines and shades filling in the rocks and plants, hanging lighter around the buildings and almost absent about metal tools and such (but still there all the same). It took me two days to figure out that I wasn’t in my universe of origin, another few minutes of observation to clue in to _which_ universe I’d been shunted to. Kinda hard to miss when all you can see of people is their chakra networks. Which is when I figure out that I’ve reincarnated as a girl. Could be worse, there’s bound to be some simple medical jutsu or another that mitigates the problem of periods, the scent of blood would break a Jonin’s stealth so badly.

I measure the days, broadly, by when people wake up and go to sleep. I don’t dream when I sleep, just have a much fuzzier view of everything around me, so it’s not exactly hard to count. That said, in the wee hours of the morning just shy of six weeks after my womb emancipation, my eyes currently open as I nurse in the arms of one of the caretakers, a good portion of the sky lights up bright red. Having lived just over twenty-two years already with a full color spectrum to work from, the idea of a not-blue-or-green color doesn’t seem that weird at the time.

* * *

Nine months pass without major incident. I’m crawling at four months, walking by six. Words take longer, however. Partly it’s that I need to learn the language, partly it’s that I need to _un-_ learn some really, truly awful pronunciation problems from my last life. Pronouncing “L” as a back-of-the-throat “W” was a part of the accent where I lived before, and if I’d got rid of it for the sake of my singing, I’d still never fully trained myself out of it. Quietly training myself to speak like a native is the main reason I take so long to speak around other people

I say my “first” word, _shi_ , at seven months. By this point the caretakers at the orphanage have started avoiding me. I hear “tensai” bandied about, along with words less complimentary than “prodigy,” all of them connected to my name. Which is Douranko. Apparently being the last child to arrive at the orphanage before Konoha’s incident with the Nine Tails granted me the name “upheaval” with a -ko tacked onto the end. I’d’ve preferred something else. Still, the orphanage’s generic last name could be worse.

Through this whole time, as I learn to crawl, then walk, then talk, as I get my tongue back under control and learn what certain things mean in chakra-sight instead of on people’s faces, I’m working on expanding my coils, running chakra through specific parts of them and stretching them until I get a vague ache in my bones there before moving on to the next area. It helps that I can see my chakra flow, and that it’s just as easy to control as my muscles were in my previous life. By the time the Iwa tester comes ‘round, just shy of two years after my birth, I’ve got my reserves up above any of the kids, near to the adults, and am talking at the level of someone a year older than myself. Reading will come soon.

* * *

_Two Years Old (January 1, Year 51)_

“This is her room?”

That’s a new voice. Orphanages in this village don’t adopt out, they’re more places where children without parents are taught a useful trade. Once a year, Iwagakure sends Chunin round the villages to see if there are any kids with obvious talent for chakra use. Or any talent at all. Apparently I’m now old enough to be given this test.

“Yes,” comes the response from the other side of the door, the eldest caretaker at the orphanage, stooped over and with a clog in her chakra coils in her lower back. She thinks it’s arthritis, I vaguely wish I knew medical techniques. Or, for that matter, how to manipulate chakra at all. “Poor dear,” I hear her continue. “We thought she was blind at first, but… we’re not quite sure. She certainly doesn’t react to facial expression. Doesn’t react to much at all, really. Some of the children try and include her, but she’s very solitary. Speaking complete sentences for six months now, and we think she’s starting to read already but-”

“Thank you, you may leave.”

I could easily play at incomprehension, throw whatever test was given to me, but that would be counterproductive. Life expectancy for a trained killer, even one regularly sent into deadly situations, is likely to be higher than a civilian living in the last decades before the Fourth Great Ninja War. So when the door opens, the matron stalking offendedly down the hall and the shinobi walking in, I nod and greet him politely. Or as politely as can be done, with my still-limited vocabulary. “Good morning, Shinobi-san.”

The shinobi sits down on my bed, looking at me as I trace a woodgrain with my fingers. “Gurando Douranko,” he says, the inflection making it clear that he’s confirming something instead of leading into a statement.

“Yes, Shinobi-san.”

He reaches into his chest pouch, a swirling mess of various objects, most of them carrying significant residual chakra from his frequent handling (and wow, that’s actually a thing, nice to confirm it), and takes out the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in this life. Sublime, curving lines, leading to the center of the device, little runnels of chakra following the contours of the lines, lighting it up in a display that wouldn’t have looked out of place at one of the less pretentious modern art displays, the ones that worked with plasma and exotic materials instead of heaps of garbage. “Touch it,” he says, and once again the inflection makes it clear that he’s ordering more than asking. I reach out and touch my hand to it, then immediately flinch back. The moment my fingers contact the device (is it really a device? It feels like p- oh, a seal) it draws a small bit of my chakra in, lighting up for a second. The lines are… more defined, now. Less ethereal, less… less beautiful, somehow. “Again,” I hear, and _this_ time the command is unmistakable. I reach out and touch it, and surprise doesn’t stop me keeping my hand on it this time. It lights up, the portion of my chakra growing steadily until, with a faint _pop_ , a corner of the seal breaks and the entire beautiful construct unravels all at once. My hand jerks back again, my eyes going wide at the sudden, unexpected destruction. “I’m very sorry, Shinobi-san! I didn’t mean to-”

“Hush, girl,” he interrupts, and brings out a different seal, this one still attractive in its own way but… more utilitarian. Not nearly so intricate in its patterns, but still with several switchbacks and tricky, winding sections. “Trace the line with your thumb.”

Who the fuck gives a coordination exercise to a two-year-old? Screw it. “Yes, Shinobi-san.”

I’m subjected to six more tests like this, before the questions start. “Do you know what ‘chakra’ is, Gurando Douranko?”  
  
“Not well, Shinobi-san.”  
  
“Explain.”  
  
“I have heard of it, Shinobi-san. However, I do not know what it is.”  
  
“You are not looking directly at me, or at anything else you focus your attention on. Can you not see well?”  
  
“I am blind, Shinobi-san.”

 _That_ draws him up short. “You neither move nor focus like someone who cannot see. What allows you to compensate for this?”

“I… can see,” I answer. “But not. Everyone says things look the way they feel, but people look different to me, Shinobi-san. Lots of lines and little dots on the lines.”

Fourteen hours and a bit of paperwork for the caretakers later, I wake up at the crack of dawn just entering Iwagakure, just over two years old and on my way into Iwa’s equivalent of early-childhood education.

* * *

**Canon Omake**

_Two Weeks After the Nine-Tails Attack (October 25, Year 48)_

_I am two months old and am considering whether I should display obvious talent or not. My body is already quite able to crawl, if not quite well-coordinated in the movements. More a wriggle than anything. I could be walking in less than six months, talking at the same time (thank you, increased infant neuroplasticity), generally get myself prepared quickly and compensate for my frankly-dismal chakra stores by working at increasing them. Being a civilian is always an option. I was content in my last life, I’d be fairly content here. Farming, enjoying life. Maybe a monk would be a good vocation, wander from place to place and learn about the world, sort of thing._

_...ooooooooor, I could learn to be a flying elemental-kung-fu wizard. I’ve got the bullshit dojutsu for it, even if it_ does _seem to have a bizarre combination of minor Sharingan and Byakugan benefits with all the crappy downsides of both, so I could… probably end up pretty famous. I’d have a lower life expectancy, but past a certain level I’d have infinitely higher survivability. And having a dojutsu, even a kind of shitty one, already puts me on a step towards that._

 _In the end, what makes my decision is a line I remember reading once._ “Knowledge is power. Power is control.”

 _And I_ hate _not being in control._

**Author's Note:**

> SoftNotes: Mad props to Cyberweasel89, my oldest and best friend, who is coauthoring this lunacy with me. She is an amazing person and a fantastic writer.
> 
> CyberSez: Sup? Cyberweasel89 here. My True Bro and I had writing sex, and this is our baby. Enjoy so I don't have to.


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